Didn't look very hard, did you?
Manitoba. It's colder, we get just as much snow, it's bigger, and bonus: it's only a few hours away!

I have never owned a truck or SUV and don't plan to. As long as you use all-season or snow tires, you should do fine, unless you're in a wide-open rural area with heavy snowfall and high winds. Keep a shovel in the trunk for emergencies, a little sand or ice-melting salt, and you're golden.

The only accident I've ever been in was when a freak gust of wind blew me sideways on the highway during a snowstorm in May several years ago. A truck or SUV wouldn't have helped then - it would have had much larger profile and the wind would have affected it more. Amusingly, I've seen more 4x4s in ditches than cars.

I hate to break it to you, but the lunar landscape is far from pristine. There are craters all over the place!

It is at this juncture that I feel I should point out that I am Canadian. :)

To be honest, most of my driving is within city limits, so I wouldn't personally be at as big a risk, but there's always that chance. But I'm a geek when it comes to technology - if I can afford it and there aren't any major issues, there's a more-than-decent chance I'll be an early adopter. I'll definitely find out before I purchase, though.

I think that's a gross exaggeration. From what I've heard, even the most dramatic change expected is still in the single digits of degrees Celsius per century; I'm pretty sure that I won't notice any difference at all. Some say that locally, extreme temperatures will get more extreme, that could mean even colder winters. Don't forget, $40/gallon isn't as dramatic as you think; inflation will push salaries up as well. Perhaps not at the same pace, but the prices won't jump 10x overnight.

Disclaimer: There are several assumptions I've made in the following that could be wrong. Please let me know if that is the case. I'm also ignoring the political aspects of your post; I'm not an American.

I'm looking forward to owning an electric vehicle. I'm in a location where electricity is relatively inexpensive and cleanly generated; the vast majority of power generation in my area is hydroelectric, and we produce more than we use. However, I have some valid concerns before diving in.

Mainly, I need to know how they'll perform in low-temperature conditions. Where I live, temperatures routinely hit -30 and -40 in the depths of winter. Many electronic devices cannot operate properly at this temperature, and batteries' output are greatly reduced. I'll need to know that I can reach my destination, because being stranded in those temperatures can be life-threatening. One option is an internal heating system that could be activated while charging upon reaching a low temperature threshold. It could function similar to a block heater for an ICE, but would probably have to heat both the motor itself and the batteries. Electric heat can be costly. Another concern is heat generation. Combustion-based engines have a useful side effect - they generate heat, which is used to heat the interior of the vehicle. An electric motor won't produce nearly as much heat. That means there'll be an even bigger drain on the batteries. As it currently stands, even with low electricity costs, it appears gas would be a cheaper and more efficient way to go.

Also, cost is a major issue - not just the initial purchase price, but maintenance and energy usage over its life. This can't be known until the vehicles have been in use for a number of years. Mechanics are currently familiar with ICEs, and there won't be an immediate uptake; supply will eventually follow demand, so many won't be familiar with electric vehicles until enough people have them. Until then, those that maintain electric vehicles will be in higher demand, thus a higher cost. I'm sure that initial costs will be higher - the manufacturers have to recover that initial R&D investment somehow.

Its a basic human right to do whatever lawful activities you want to do inside your home. Her jackass neighbor is trying to legally force her to not use Wifi. If someone was doing that to me, I'd feel like my rights were being violated / attacked too. To the point where I would fire back a counter suit and sue him into the ground.

You pulled that from the link in the update, which is older than than the actual story link, which is the official Playstation Blog.

They're going back on their word. Of course, they do mention that you don't HAVE to upgrade, but...

Which pretty much cripples it as a game console, and dead-ending it's Bluray playback support.

I envy your optimism. It will most likely go the recording industry -- the ones who have to be appeased over the digital equivalent of mixtapes.

First of all, Google doing anything is not a news :) Second, GTV is a platform by Philips. So, even if Google launches this 'TV', it may not be called GTV

And a good worker will communicate with their manager and let him know when they don't have clearly defined goals and aren't being rewarded according to their successes

Communication works both ways.....

"The price of optics may have been coming down, not necessarily at Moore's Law speeds because the physics and market pressures are different, but that's also not going to show up in the 322 Tbps shiny marketing number either."
The optical networking industry was making HUGE leaps in the late 1990s in terms of capacity. The problem is they leapt way beyond what the market needed - why buy equipment to push more through one fiber when you have hundreds of dark fibers? Then the tech industry bubble burst and the optical networking companies (Corning, JDSU, etc) were in some REALLY sever pain.

There just isn't nearly as much money going into backbones these days because the last mile and even the edges aren't improving very fast.

Oh jeez, get over yourself. No one can keep a close personal relationship with every one of our friends. We have moved or have families or are just too busy. Facebook is a simple way to keep in touch. I log in, see someone I haven't chatted with in awhile, send them some messages and enjoy seeing how they are doing.

To try to make it seem like that is somehow anti-social and I don't have real friends is moronic. I don't maintain some sort of fake personality. I'll throw up a link or something if I think the people I know will enjoy it and that's about it.

Stop being such a judgmental prick. My "real" friends that I hang out with every weekend are on facebook. It is just an easy way to share things with them. Sometimes they organize events through facebook (like disc golf outings).

If you don't like it, fine, don't use it. But there isn't anything screwed up with people who do and find it useful.

And don't you find it ironic you are telling people to get off the Internet when you are on Slashdot posting all day?

And for the love of all that is good, learn how to use capital letters at the beginning of sentences!

Rare in this context really doesn't mean rare as in short supply...

"As defined by IUPAC, rare earth elements or rare earth metals are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanides.[1] Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earths since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties.

The term "rare earth" arises from the rare earth minerals from which they were first isolated, which were uncommon oxide-type minerals (earths) found in Gadolinite extracted from one mine in the village of Ytterby, Sweden. However, with the exception of the highly-unstable promethium, rare earth elements are found in relatively high concentrations in the earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust at 68 parts per million."

I realize that energy usage will be prohibitive to resource recovery at some point. It remains to be determined where that point actually is - e.g. uranium recovery from seawater might actually be feasible. I have no idea where that point is for rare earths, though. Rare earths are not actually rare, after all. They tend to be well diluted, with few high concentration deposits. That's exactly where the thermodynamic angle comes in, so we have to think about this in terms of energy availability.

I am perfectly realistic about the fact that we can't switch to a sustainable energy economy over night. Before we cover whole countries with solar cells, we should rather get a better yield from solar thermal, add in nuclear as an intermediate solution and we better hope that we get fusion running. We won't run out of hydrogen that fast.